Tuesday, July 17, 2007

"Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Benjamin Franklin

America's brewing landscape began to change in the late 1970s. The traditions and styles brought over by immigrants from all over the world were disappearing. Only light lager appeared on shelves and in bars and imported beer was not a significant player in the marketplace. Highly effective marketing campaigns had changed America's beer preference to light-adjunct lager. Low calorie light lager beers soon began driving and shaping the growth and nature of the American beer industry, even to present day. By the end of the decade the beer industry had consolidated to only 44 brewing companies. Industry experts predicted that soon there would only be 5 brewing companies in the United States.

At the same time as American brewing landscape was shrinking in taste and size a grassroots homebrewing culture emerged. The homebrewing hobby began to thrive because the ONLY way a person in the United States could experience the beer traditions and styles of other countries was to make the beer themselves. These homebrewing roots gave birth to what we now call the "Craft Brewing" industry.

The 1980s was truly the decade of the microbrewing pioneers. In a time when industry experts flat out refused to recognize their existence as anything serious, the pioneering companies emerged with their passion and a vision, serving their local communities a taste of full flavored beer and old world European traditions; all with what was to become a uniquely American character. Through extraordinarily difficult market conditions, the microbreweries and brewpubs of the 1980s struggled to establish the foundation for what was to become the proliferation of craft beer in America.

Momentum began to pick up for the microbrewing phenomenon in the early to mid 1990s with annual volume growth increasing from 35% in 1991 increasing each year to a high of 51% in 1995. In 1996 growth began to slow at 26% and in 1997 1,302 micro-, pub- and regional craft-breweries increased their volume by 5%. The proliferation of microbreweries, beer types and brands swept major beer markets and beer enthusiastic regions of the United States. By 1998 American craft beer was available in just about everywhere, though growth has stabilized ever since at a rate of between 1 and 3% each year.

By the year 2000 there were 1,392 breweries in the United States. The three largest brewing companies had consolidated the major part of the American beer market, accounting for 96 percent of the beer produced in the United States. In 2001 1,458 "Craft" breweries produced 6.23 million barrels (there are 31 U.S. gallons in a U.S. barrel) or about 3% of the beer consumed in the United States. The development of a positive beer culture has also influenced the doubling in five years of the American imported beer market to 21.8 million barrels in 2001.

To date there are 1,428 active breweries within the United States. Roughly 2.5%, thirty-six to be exact, of those breweries are located in the Middle and Southern Appalachians. Most of these breweries are operated in conjunction with a restaurant, (due to state tax laws requiring food sales where alcohol is served) commonly referred to as "brew-pubs", and most do not sell their product for consumption outside of the brewery. This last stipulation makes me want to find a good teetotaling friend to taxi me from brewery to brewery throughout our region. I suggest that you do the same and make your way to these fine places...

...and even though it is technically out of the region we tend to focus on, this brewery beat those South of the Mason-Dixon line for the name, Appalachian Brewing Company (no doubt pronounced "Apple-A-shun"), located in Harrisburg, PA. I've sampled this group's frothy beverage and it is a worthy brew to us in "Apple-at-cha".

Another brew deserving of mention from the far North, named after Vermont's portion of the Appalachian Trail, is the Long Trail Ale. It's yummy to your tummy on a hot summer day in Bennington, VT.

All of the above breweries were found on the Brewer's Association's Directory. If your company or your favorite breweries in Appalachia were overlooked by my list, it's time to register with the Brewer's Association.

4 comments:

Well done! All fine brews indeed (at least the ones that I have had). Highland Brewery is still one of my faves and missed it dearly when I moved to Nashville from Black Mountain, NC. But it's here now and will be seeing them at the Music City Brewer's Fest! Which certainly doesn't compare to the Brewgrass festival. Sigh . . .

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This blog is about our Appalachia - the real one, not the Hollywood-stereotype nor the third-world nation-esque stereotype being sold by do-gooders, or even the neo-Romantic sylvan stereotype that Rousseau would probably buy into.

It should be interesting.

Horn-Tootin'

~ The BrickRanch.com - My latest most favorite blog is The Hillbilly Savants. It’s an intelligent look at an interesting and sometimes misunderstood culture. If you have Appalachian blood in you, then you know what I’m talking about. If you have any preconceived notions about Appalachians then this may give you a much needed attitude adjustment. If you have no idea at all what I’m talking about but have a curious mind, check it out. ~ Charlestonian Blog - Hillbilly Savants is one of those blogs that makes you want to just want to pull up the rockin' chair and put your feet next to the fire. Do check it out, and take your time. Look over the archives. Lots of great photos and articles from a couple dozen or so contributors. ~ Cup of Joe Powell - I've recently found another fascinating place to read about all things Appalachian. Hillbilly Savants has a staggering amount of information, links to bajillions of newspaper, television and radio sites, bloggers from across the South, colleges, research and policy groups, a hefty list of contributors and much, much more. Exhaustive work is evident here. The topics cover culture and politics and tall tales of the region, history, science - you name it. I was more than honored to find they linked to this humble but lovable blog, too. ~ Jape's Japes - These guys rock...a group of bloggers writing substantial insights into this region we now call home. If only I could write like this. ~ Knoxville Trivia Blog - Hillbilly Savants is one of the best blogs on the entire web. ~ Maysville Kentucky Blog - Stereotypes are great in the purpose that they serve. They give us a way of packaging up all the things we know nothing about so that we can reduce them down to a single image, and then neatly dismiss them. I don't feel the need to hang out with Eskimos because I'm reasonably sure that I don't want to live in an igloo or eat frozen fish, that sort of thing. The Hillbilly Savant reminds those who take notice -- and I encourage everyone to take notice -- that people in Appalachia are not so neatly defined. We might be hillbillies in some ways, but we can still add 2 + 2. If we can't, we sure as hell know how to work a calculator : ) Anywho... there's countless reasons to proudly shout out from the Appalachian region to the rest of the world, and that's what the Hillbilly Savant reminds us. Plus they link off to a boat load of other regional blogs, so there's definitely something for everyone. ~ openswitch - Odds are you’ve never been to the Appalachia region of the U.S. I, however, have spent the past 10 years of my life living withing driving distance of it, and have spent a lot of time in some of the small towns that have cropped out of this old mountain range. Today’s blog . . . is Hillbilly Savants. As the name implies, this blog is all about Appalachia, and it’s well written to boot. It’s a multi-author blog so far as I can tell, and it seems to be updated fairly regularly. They blog about helping people, interesting history and a lot of other great stuff. The history, the people and the culture behind this region of the U.S. is very interesting to me and I think that often times it’s misrepresented as being extremely backwards. I think this blog does a great job of highlighting the fact that the stereotypical hillbilly isn’t so stereotypical. ~ Rednecromancer - . . . Hillbilly Savants is as fine of an Appalachian magazine as any in print. The fact that so many individuals contribute to this work and yet the quality is consistent has to be a statistically anomaly. Hillbilly Savants specializes in points of interest mostly from eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia but is indeed a regional eZine. The photographs are worth a weekly visit. One of the grand services offered by Hillbilly Savants is an exhaustive list of Appalachian area media outlets, art establishments, educational institutions, various web pages for federal, state and local government and of course web pages of other Appalachian interest. ~ ruminations from the distant hills- Hillbilly Savants is everything a blog should be. That why you'll find it on the sidebar. Click it. Often. So imagine my surprise when RUMINATIONS was included in Hillbilly Savants' recent tribute to BLOGS OF NOTE. Keep your ol' Oscars and your Pulitzers and your what-have-yous. I'm happy with a tip of the hat from HS. ~ Wandering Hillbilly - time is short, but i wonted to let ye know bout a new blog a commmenter name of april tole me bout, witch tiz a blog name of Hillbilly Savants. i aint red near a nuff of it yet, but tiz chuck full of good stuff frum whut i kin see, speshly fer folks frum appalachia.